Hi folks,
just had a remarkable surprise on how much the slicer matters!
I recently watched this video by Thomas Sanladerer where he advertises the new features of PrusaSlicer 2.3, and since a) I think that Tom is a clever guy, b) there are really some nice features in it (variable layer hight for example) and c) was increasingly frustrated with the strange GCode Cura was producing with the newer versions, having many head travels I did not understand, I decided to give it a try. I am really surprised about the difference! I was not expecting the slicer to solve some problems I attributed to old and/or wet filament or (shame on me) to Snapmakerās inferior part cooling. I ran more or less the same part once through Cura, and once through Prusa slicer. You could already hear the difference while printing: Curaās GCode sounded harsh with audible discontinuities, while the Prusa GCode made for smooth movements with continuous, smooth gradients in the stepper noise. It seems that Cura interpolates differently as compared to Prusa slicer - but admittedly thatās just guessing.
Whatever, here are comparisons (Same calibration, same PLA, same A350, same mostly everything) between the Cura and the Prusa sliced parts - left: Cura, right: Prusa. The difference is obvious!
Iāve read on Facebook many people that complain about scars, tiny protrusions on their print surfaces - and thatās exactly what I have with Cura (second image), and which is completely gone with Prusa Slicer. On the first image you see kindof the reverse artifacts as ditches.
Last remark: If you donāt want the Prusa branding - PrusaSlicer is a fork of Slic3r - so go there if you prefer, although I did not check if the performance is the same.
Cheers
Hauke
Had started to look into Prusaslicer but couldnāt find decent presets/profile for SM.
Didnāt have time nor the energy to go in and input the settings.
Anybody have these?
I had gotten slic3r (not Prusa, but the open-source original) working, but have yet to spend much time dialing it in for better results. Maybe I should get back to that. I have noticed that gcode sliced with it seems to be better optimised for speed than Luban or Cura gcode, even when starting with the same STL file and similar settings.
Hereās my current PrusaSlicer profile - but thatās an early start, maybe thereās room for improvement.
Remark: ich changed the path to the SVG-logo file to a relative path - hope that works.
And: I am just starting with the software - not sure if I exported correctly. PrusaSlicer.zip (10.1 KB)
EDIT: Itās for A350ā¦
EDIT EDIT: Beware of a slightly different behaviour of the GCode/Printer:
First, only bed heats up
Then, head moves to corner of printing bed
Then the head heads up
Then it moves to start of print, not oozing a primer beforehand
Because of that, actual print will start a bit delayed since nozzle pressure needs to build up first.
Hey Hauke, thank you for posting this Prusa file. I have a Prusa i3 Mk2.5 as well as the A350.
Im no expert with printing but to be honest, you donāt have to be with a Prusaā¦ its a āRelentless printing machineā.
I find the PrusaSlicer good to use and would like to use it with the A350, when I finish faffing around with the Laser and want to print something large.
Hauke, I would very much appreciate a tutorial on how to put this into my A350 (or how to use it withā¦) so that I can slice with the P-Slicer. I have no clue how to do this and have shyāed away when I read things like editing Gcode or M190 commandsā¦etc
Interestingā¦ I use CURA mainly and get good surface quality results. There are a few settings buried down inā expertā or āshow all settingsā that can affect print surface quality, especially outer surface. One of the main ones is in the shell settings in the compensate flow for outer walls and inner walls and the % amount. Its on by deafult and can cause surface finish issues. So might just be settings rather than CURA itself.
But i will have a go with PrusaSlicer at somepoint again as moved away from it a while back when it was just Slic3r
Got similar feedback on Facebook, John Alred pointing me to his profiles, which you can find here. Iāll give them a try with some next print to come, and see if it makes a difference. Still, PrusaSlicer appeals to me for its UI, and its rather fast! So maybe Iāll shift permanently anyhowā¦
As I said, I am just starting to play around with PrusaSlicer myself. I suppose hereās what you need to do to use my settings:
Unzip my ZIP file somewhere
In PrusaSlicer, use āHelpā -> āShow Config Folderā
Put the SVG file from my ZIP into the folder that opens
Now use āFileā -> āImportā -> āImport Configā to import the .ini-FIles in my ZIP.
After that, āSnapmaker 2 A350ā should be available from the printer and printer settings drop-downs. Also, my PLA and PETG profile should be there if you want, but those are definitely not to be rcommended without adjustment - they where fine for my print, but are not necessary good for any print.
From there on it should be in no way different from working with your Prusa printer.
Hi all, I also was disapointed with my first couple of prints on the A350 using Luban, and at first I had it as wet or damp fillament or something or the other.
I have the original prusa I3 Mk3s and the prusa mini, and have been using the prusa slicer with my prusa machines for a while.
To my surprise printing on Snapmaker using prusa slicer solved just about all my problems.
I am yet to try the new version of prusa.
Is Slic3r still being developed? The release notes from the latest version appear to have a 2018 date.
Since Prusa Slicer is based on Slic3r, is it that stale as well? Old software isnāt necessarily a bad thing, but a lot has changed in 3D printing in the last 2 years.
The last commit to Slic3rās Github repository was in late August of 2020āthey just havenāt packaged a formal release. Github indicates that more than a thousand people have forked the code, so itās pretty certain that someone, somewhere is working on it and will eventually issue a pull request. What I have installed is not the release version from 2018, but what they had on Github as of a couple of months ago.
PrusaSlicer is definitely under active development. They only just released version 2.3. And itās their strategic software for their popular and successful printer eco system - would be really surprised if theyād ditch it, and likelihood is high that they - being obvious friends of open source - will give back their improvements also to Slic3r.
I noticed the other day that there is also a CLI interface available. That seems like a nice way to do post-processing for any tool that outputs ārawā g-code or STL for example.
I have used Cura for a number of years but recently I have found a few issues so I thought I would give Prusa a go. I am not sure I have sorted out the relationship between snapshots, profiles and physical printers but the interface is a lot simpler. The tabs make it easy to find what you need and a lot easier than the endless list of visible and hidden options in Cura.
Output also seems to be cleaner. Last problem I had with Cura was the lock tab on the front of this box. In Cura it just disappeared when sliced. In Prusa it worked without issue. Could be a problem with the STL - Prusa did say that it auto repaired 346 errors! But Prusa fixed it and Cura didnāt.
Prusa also integrates seamlessly with OctoPrint so I donāt loose that Cura āsend to OctoPrintā option thatās a must have for me.
Good to have two slicers that work well and I can choose either depending on the capabilities I want without impacting my workflow - or getting out of my chair!
